1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to computing and more particularly to memory management in computer systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Software platforms that employ implicit memory management provide dynamic flexibility to software developers by enabling users to easily allocate memory while relying on system functions to deallocate memory corresponding to objects that are no longer in use. However, when memory that should be deallocated is referenced by an existing pointer, also known as a dangling pointer or a wild pointer, the deallocation process is typically thwarted and memory allocations may grow indefinitely without corresponding deallocations, a condition known as a memory leak. Although the data structure corresponding to a memory leak can be identified by existing methods, the program elements that caused the memory leak during execution are not so easily identified as a source of the memory leak. Thus, there is a need for improved memory-leak identification including sources of memory leaks.